On the occasion of the completion of the RESONANCE project, you can now order the richly illustrated catalogue, documenting the sound art works that were commissioned by the network in the four years of its existence.

The RESONANCE book contains, complete and unabridged, all the interviews with the participating artists, documenting their reflections about content and process at the time of their work for RESONANCE.

You will find it all together in the fine one hundred and twenty hard covered pages of the RESONANCE book… Order here and now, using the PayPal ‘Buy Now’ button (€17.99, p&p included)
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Last in the series of new sound art works commissioned by the RESONANCE Network in the 2012-2014 period is Photophon, an installation by the Belgian artist Aernoudt Jacobs. As small and fragile as it laborious, Photophon will premiere as part of the RESONANCE-in-Maastricht showcase that is taking place between September 13th and 29th at Intro in situ’s. (The exhibition in Maastricht will also include a new installment of Signe Lidén’s Writings and another presentation of The Beaters by Thomas Rutgers and Jitske Blom. Peter Bogers will present a second version of his Untamed Choir and David Helbich made an arrangement of the performative soundwalk that he composed for the Flanders Festival in Kortrijk, for the streets and squares of Maastricht.)

Photophon is based upon the so-called photoacoustic effect, that was discovered in the late nineteenth century by the brilliant Scottish scientist, inventor and innovator Alexander Graham Bell, who probably is best known as the inventor of the telephone. As a teenager Alexander Bell witnessed how his mother slowly grew deaf, which aroused his very special interest in all things related to speech, hearing and sound. In 1880, together with his assistant Charles Tainter, he developed a device that transmitted sounds wirelessly, on a beam of light: the photophone. It reflected sunlight from a flexible flat mirror that actually served as a microphone. When somebody talked against the mirror’s back, the variations in air pressure caused by the soundwaves of the voice moved the flexible material, and were literally reflected in variations of the brightness of the mirrored sunlight. One then ‘only’ needed to translate these back into sound…

It was while working on this receiving end of his photophone that Bell discovered the optoacoustic or photoacoustic effect. He found that solid materials that were exposed to a beam of sunlight that was interrupted by a fast turning wheel with slots (thus giving rise to a very rapid series of light pulses), started to produce sounds. The main (though not sole) reason for this is photothermal. The physical explanation goes roughly like this: the material is heated by the light energy that it absorbs, which causes it to contract and expand; these ‘movements’ of the material then give rise to pressure changes in the surrounding air; but that of course means that there will be sound!

It was this use of strictly ephemeral phenomena to create sonic events that inspired Aernoudt’s artistic re-interpretation and development of Bell’s discovery. “I was mesmerized by the idea,” he says, “that sounds around us can be created with light. From Bell’s research notes I learned that any material comes with a sonority that will be revealed by hitting it with a strong enough beam of light. Every material has a resonant frequency, but every material can also be ‘sonically activated’. And its sound is directly related to its resonant frequencies. For me this was a revelation, touching the world of sounds in its very essence!”

Aernoudt’s work is a fine example of a combination of artistic and scientific research. He has been developing his Photophon installation in close collaboration with the Laboratory of Acoustics and Thermal Physics of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. I saw a prototype (picture above) of the elegant and intriguing horn-like object that is to become the sounding heart of the installation, when earlier this year, at the IMAL in Brussels, I visited an exhibition of Overtoon, the Brussels based platform for research, production and distribution of sound and media art that is directed by Aernoudt and Christoph de Boeck.

“The horn is the last in the chain of elements that together make up the photophonic object that I imagined,” Aernoudt explained. “It acts as a loudspeaker. Because of its specific dimensions, it will amplify some of the frequencies produced by the photoacoustic cell that I built. That cell is a kind of Helmholtz resonator, placed at the narrow end of the horn. Eventually, the horns will be between 60 and 70 centimeters long, very narrow at the one end (about 3 millimeters), and then widening to some 22 centimeters at the other end. The precise dimensions are related to the resonance frequency that I work with.”

“In the very first version I used the horn of an old gramophone that I bought on a flea market. The light source was a green laser. That Photophon produced a soft buzzing sound. The subsequent versions use customized horns, that are adapted to the cell. All is centered on one specific frequency, with its corresponding over- and undertones. I started with a plastic horn, realized in one piece using a 3D printer. But that was too fragile. It broke rather quickly. The model at the IMAL exhibition also has a plastic horn made with a 3D printer, but that was done in 3 separate parts, that I then glued together.”

At the IMAL I saw light, I saw movement, but I did not hear any sounds.

“True. But that’s because the light source was a led, which is not intense enough to produce a sound that is audible with your bare ears. There is a sound, but you would need to use a stethoscope to hear it. With a laser source, that I can use in my studio, the sound becomes audible. So for the RESONANCE installation in Maastricht, I will use laser sources.”

And you will use glass horns. Glass surely has acoustic properties that are quite different from those of the plastic you used for the earlier versions. This will also influence the sound, I presume.

“Yes, it will influence the sound. The glass will resonate more than the plastic. And of course there is the visual, the aesthetic aspect. The transparent glass horns will make for a far more delicate look than that of the the opaque white plastic objects.”

How did your collaboration with the Laboratory of Acoustics and Thermal Physics at the KUL, the Catholic University in Leuven, come about?

“We have been working together for about one year and a half now. Our collaboration started after I had invited them to come to one of my earlier exhibitions. At the time I already was researching the sonic and acoustic investigations that were done in the 19th century, and the empirical sound theories that were developed at that time by people like Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolph Koenig, Jules Lissajous, and so on. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that in many cases those investigations were based only on acoustic phenomena, with no electronics involved. They analyzed everything with analog, mechanical devices. It makes their findings very palpable and understandable. Christ Glorieux, who is the head of the Leuven Acoustics Lab, introduced me to Bell’s photophone, that they were working with a lot at the laboratory. And this then gave rise to the idea of making an installation based on the photophone.”

“Art-science collaboration are sort of a trend these days. So my case is surely not unique. It is very interesting though. Also, because it is not always easy to really work together. Unlike a scientist, as an artist I am all the time groping around in the dark. As an artist, that is where you want to be. Where you need to be. You will always want to try out things that are deemed to be ‘impossible’. Putting a horn on a photophone was one of those ‘impossibilities’… The scientists at the lab would never use a horn. They put tiny microphones inside the acoustic cell. Which, from their point of view, is far more manageable. It is what they need for their scientific approach. But still, sometimes there are holes in their research…”

Which then will allow you to jump right in.

“Indeed. And we can talk about it. That makes for very interesting conversations.”

Do you have a scientific background yourself? Or is your scientific knowledge self-taught?

“Most of it is self-taught. But I did study architecture, which introduced me to many different subjects. A lot of technology. But also mathematics and mechanics. So that makes for quite a broad background. Even though I never finished my studies. I failed the fourth year, after which I stopped and decided to concentrate on music and art. But also as a musician and an artist, I never stopped thinking about space.”

What is the role of space in the Photophon installation?

“It is important that the space be as quiet as possible. It also will be important in the sense that it will determine the way in which visitors approach the installation.”

In Maastricht the Photophon installation will be made of three of Arnoudt’s photophonic objects. Each of them will have a laser light source, with the intensity necessary to produce audible sounds. “The continuous laser light is interrupted by two rotating slotted wheels. These wheels are the second element in the construction,” Aernoudt explained. “Each of the wheels is moved by a small electric motor. There are two of them (separated by a distance of about 5 centimeters), in order to provide two distinct modulations of the laser light. If the first wheel is rotating at a very high speed, the sound produced by the photoacoustic cell will be a continuous túúúúúúúúúúúúúúttt. The second wheel is meant to interrupt that continuous sound, so as to produce a kind of rhythm: túúútt – túúútt – túúútt – túúútt – túúútt … The third element of the object, after the laser and the wheels, is the photoacoustic cell that I designed, and which – as I explained before – is based on the idea of a Helmholtz resonator. It is a small sphere, containing a black disc. Because of the series of light pulses that is hitting the disc, the photoacoustic effect will give rise to a sound. Now the shape of the cell, the globe, is important because it will strengthen certain of the frequencies. What you will hear, then is determined by the rotating wheels, and by the properties of the photoacoustic cell. The Helmholtz resonance and the acoustic properties of the glass horn, the fourth and final element in the construction, take care of some form of amplification of the sound.”

I guess it would be possible to add some sort of a controller to the electric motors that drive the wheels, to change the speed of their rotation in real time, and thus vary the resulting sound in real time. You might then play the Photophon like a musical instrument.

“I absolutely intend to provide a certain kind of ‘musicality’. But in the form of an installation, not in the form of a playable instrument. The musicality is latent. It is present, but hidden. The electric motors are driven in real time by a micro controller, which will give variations and rhythms to the tones. And each of the glass horns will actually have slightly different dimensions. Being handmade, it was impossible for the glassblower to make them perfectly identical. I still have to try them out, but I suspect that volume and resonance frequency will be different for each of them.”

So the sounding result will be like a microtonal chord?

“That is difficult to say at this point. A lot will also depend on the precision and the stability of the electric motors that I am going to use. Only if these can be adjusted very precisely will I be able to produce truly microtonal structures. But as things are looking now, that will not yet be the case in Maastricht. I hope, though, to be able to develop the work further in the near future.”

“As I said before and although this may not be immediately apparent: the musical, the compositional element, is very important to me. But I will only be able to fully exploit this in some next phase of the project. I am already planning a sequel for next year, which would be an outdoors installation. It will be based on the use of sunlight, but combined with new technologies that will enable me to track the sun, and then add artificial light as a compensation as soon as the intensity of the sun becomes insufficient. This confrontation of 19th century technologies with the top technology of our times is, of course, already evident in this version of the work: the laser, the drive of the wheels, the cutting of the wheels… All of this is based on very contemporary technologies, that then combine with these pure, non-electric, analog ideas from the 19th century. That’s amazing, I think. It’s a meeting of two very different worlds and two very different times…”

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Aernoudt Jacobs’s Photophon can be experienced at Intro in situ (Capucijnengang 12, Maastricht, the Netherlands), as part of a RESONANCE showcase including works by Peter Bogers, Signe Lidén, David Helbich and Thomas Ruthers & Jitske Blom. The opening will take place on Friday September 13th, 2013, at 17h00. The RESONANCE exhibition at Intro in situ can be visited daily from Saturday September 14th until Sunday September 29th, between 11h and 17h. There will two special guided tours by Harold Schellinx (on Thursday September 26th and Friday September 27th, at 19h30), and a lecture on sound art by Armeno Alberts, on Thursday September 26th, at 21h30.

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“Phonophon” was produced for RESONANCE by Stichting Intro in situ in Maastricht, the Netherlands, with additional support from the Dutch Province of Limburg.The work was developed by Aernoudt Jacobs in collaboration with the Laboratorium voor Akoestiek en Thermische Fysica (Laboratory of Acoustics and Thermal Physics) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven).

The past couple of weeks in Østre (the Lydgalleriet’s new space for sound art and electronic music in Bergen, Norway), Dutch artist Peter Bogers has been working on the installation and fine tuning of Untamed Choir, a new work that he produced for RESONANCE, and which will premiere as part of a short summer-exposition at Østre (from July 25th until August 11th, 2013), also featuring The Beaters, by Jitske Blom and Thomas Rutgers.

Peter Bogers’s new work is a spatial composition that uses 30 vocal tracks, played back through a set of 40 small loudspeakers that are hanging from the ceiling of the room into which the piece is projected. 20 of these are positioned on a large circle, with their cones pointing inwards. The others are spread over the rest of the projection space.

The following picture shows a sketch of a possible positioning of the loudspeakers, but the precise distribution of the speakers will obviously depend on the properties and dimensions of the room in which Untamed Choir is presented.

“Up until now the installations that I made, were more like sculptures; visual things; things that are,” Peter said. “The visitors might contemplate them and listen to them for as long as they liked. This is sort of a first time that I present a work that actually has a definite beginning and a definite end. Untamed Choir is a composition, a thing with a fixed duration. Of fifteen minutes.”

“The installation nevertheless does have a strong visual component. It consists in a projection of images of noise, moving between white dots on a black background and black dots on a white background, that illuminate the space into which the piece is projected. These images are of a ‘positive’ and of a ‘negative’ kind, just like one might consider ‘screaming’ to be the ‘sonic negative’ of ‘singing’ or ‘chanting’. The projection thus reflects the transformations: from ‘screaming’ and ‘crying’ to ‘chanting’ and ‘singing’ to ‘screaming’ and ‘crying’.”

How did you go about collecting the vocal material that you needed for the work?

“Much of the material consists in samples. Of singing, of choirs… I took anything that I could get hold of and that I thought might be useful. And then there are parts that I sung myself, and parts that I asked friends and acquaintances to sing. Originally I had planned to do a lot of the necessary vocal recordings in Bergen, in cooperation with a number of students here. But unfortunately, due to several changes in the work schedules, that has not been possible. So I ended up doing most of the recording and collecting of the sound in Amsterdam.”

“The things that I recorded myself were primarily related to the many transitions that I needed, in various tonal pitches, between the crying/screaming and chanting/singing. Often such transitions had to be very, very gradual. So gradual, that it becomes impossible to pinpoint the precise moment of change… In the singing parts I aimed at a very stylized… eh… well, yes, I may indeed just say: at a kind of ‘beauty’. I wanted it to be the sort of thing capable to seduce the listeners.”

Many of the fragments that I heard, in your preview video (which you will find embedded at the end of this article), struck me as almost Wagnerian in atmosphere…

“The singing had to be beautiful. Parts of it – including the end – are indeed kind of ‘dark’, kind of ‘heavy’. And some parts get kind of ‘psychedelic’… The piece has been conceived as a single, continuous, expiration. I removed all the breathing from the samples and the recordings. And I distribute the 30 vocal tracks over the 40 loudspeakers. This allows me to actually move sounds in the space. I can make them go round in a circle; and I can freeze them, keep them in one specific spot. Most of the singing is located everywhere in the space, including the circle; but the screaming is concentrated within the circle. When the chanting turns into screaming, the transformation initially takes places within all of the channels. But then gradually it is pulled towards the center. Until the scream occupies nothing but the middle of the room, where it literally is running around in circles. At varying speeds. So it is a pretty … yes … physical work.”

And with the extensive spatial configuration, the listener, when moving around, will experience a continuously changing perspective?

“The idea indeed is that one moves through the space, and that one will encounter changes in the sound on, say, every square meter. But these changes and these shifts are very subtle. They do ask for some concentration, so it may help if one closes one’s eyes… I am actually very happy with the acoustic conditions that I have been given here in Østre. My studio in Amsterdam is a bare space, with a lot of reflections. Here the sound is muted. And that is what this piece needs, because it allows for a far more precise localization of each of the sounds.”

Along with the noisy images that illuminate the space, also a running time code is projected. What do the numbers refer to?

“The numbers actually do not refer to anything specific. It is just a counter that is running, all through the piece.”

Like the transitioning noise images, they seem to suggest, though, that there is also something rather formal about the piece; in contrast maybe with the expressionistic – the untamed – ‘romanticism’ of the singing; ánd of the shouting…

“Maybe… I have to confess that I still have my doubts about the use of the counter. It will be part of the show here in Bergen, but I have not yet made up my mind as to whether I will also include it in the subsequent renderings of the piece… But there is a system to the numbers. When screaming transits into singing, the noisy projection simultaneously transits from positive to negative. So if at first the images are very light (white noise on a black background), then during a transformation from screaming to singing the picture will gradually turn into something very dark (black noise on a white backgrond). And the tipping point will correspond to the counter’s transition from plus to minus. Via zero. The counter also indicates the beginning and the end. When the work begins, the noisy image will just show you the dots, standing still. The dots do not move. And the counter is at 0. Untamed Choir then starts with a scream. And at the same time the counter starts running. The piece ends fifteen minutes later with a transition from low singing to very low screaming, which eventually turns into a kind of sigh, while the counter runs to 0. There it stops, in a still image of noise…”

“So there is a beginning. Then there is an end. And in between it is a cycle. Like a life cycle.”

“My earliest fascination, in the 1970’s, was for performance art, with its very challenging physicality and direct confrontation with the audience. Around that same time, the first handy video cameras became available, and I realized that I actually preferred this use of technology, as an intermediary, between myself and the audience. I specifically remember one of these early works, of which no documentation has survived, but which was crucial in my development. I was sitting on a chair, surrounded by lights, making sounds with my mouth directly in front of a camera. The close up image of the lighted inside of my mouth then was shown on a monitor above my head, along with the amplified sounds – I started with baby like gurgling and vocal noises – that I was producing. That was how I began apply technology as a means to put up a separation between myself and the onlookers.”

It also shows a very early fascination for the human voice.

“I did an awful lot of recording of the vocal sounds of my first born son. Babies just begin to make noises. It’s a very free form of vocal experimentation, something that I find absolutely admirable, really. And then language starts sneaking in. This transition I find extremely fascinating. I made a work in which I imitate the sounds he made. There are two images, on two monitors. One showing his sounds, and on the one above there’s me. And the alternation of the two produced this very strong rhythmicity… So, yes, the human voice has continued to be a focal point.”

Your background is quite obviously in the visual arts, but do you consider yourself to be, nevertheless, in some sense, a composer?

“Actually I think that music is the best there is. So, to be honest, I really would have liked to be a musician…”

Do you play an instrument?

“Ah, well, a little bit of everything, one might say. I have a pretty good sense for rhythm, so I can do some drumming, play a bit of mouth organ. Nothing properly, though. But sound always had a strong presence in my work. It is only now though, with this work, that some sort of composing is involved. That I find myself being concerned with decisions about pitch, frequencies, timing, the combination of voices, and so on. With real musical components. Before, my point of departure always were the images. But when you turn on a camera to capture images, you also get the sounds. And I always have used this immediate link between image and sound. I would never add a soundtrack to images just to create a certain atmosphere. Sound that is being used to manipulate the viewer into a certain mood while looking at images usually makes me feel pretty uncomfortable. There has to be a connection between the two, a natural link.”

There is quite a long tradition within music and sound art of works that quite specifically address the distribution of sound sources and musicians within a space. Is this something that you have looked into?

“No, not really. I have to admit that my historical knowledge is pretty limited. Especially when it comes to this field of ‘sound art’, which as a matter of fact is sort of new to me. Even though some of my works, in hindsight, actually might very well be labelled as such. ‘Heaven’, for example, a work from 1995, installed in a little working-class house in the center of Utrecht. I had a great many of these old, small black and white surveillance video monitors, which were scattered around the three rooms. And each of the monitors showed an image lasting no more than one second, playing forwards and then backwards. With the corresponding sound, playing forward one second, and then in reverse for one second, on and on and on, in endless repetition. These were all sorts of images of small things, that you might see happen in such a house. Someone’s neck that is turning this way, one second, and then back the other second. And the second hand of a clock, going one tick forward and then one tick backwards again. A baby sucking milk from his mother’s breast. All the time there’s this repetition, this back and forth, and it becomes like a machine, something very rhythmic, going… ta-duh ta-duh… ta-duh ta-duh… which makes it, in a way, highly oppressive. So like ‘Untamed Choir’ this was a piece in which the spatial distribution was central, and the visitors had to walk through the piece.”

“The title ‘Heaven’ is that of a Talking Heads song. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. That’s a wonderful image. When this kiss is over it will start again. It will not be any different, it will be exactly the same. Heaven is a place where events do not devalue. Here on earth, for us, that is not the case. And maybe that is indeed our problem. Things continue and repeat. But they will hardly remain fun.”

From June 6th until July 7th 2013, singuhr – hoergalerie presents Bursting Confidence, a sound installation created by the German artist Stefan Roigk for the RESONANCE network, at Kunsthaus Meinblau in Berlin, Germany.

Stefan made an expansive sculpture for the exhibition space – an approximately 5 meter high atrium – that works with the spatial multidimensionality of the room. In his own words: “I use mouldings of divers objects made of papier-maché as sculptural source material – formally complex and richly structured objects which create a ‘jungle-like’ spatial sculpture as they lie, stand or float, interlocking or isolated, beckoning the viewer to move through it. The plastic forms, which appear frozen, are both spatially and temporally brought to life in a multi-channelled composition. This spatial composition works both selectively and atmospherically with concrete noises, which expand the installation into an open, quasi ‘never-ending theatre work’…”

The following series of pictures, made by Heinrich Hermes, give a visual impression of the installation. Visit the installation at Kunsthaus Meinblau to hear what it sounds like and stay tuned for more on Stefan Roigk and his Bursting Confidence, in an upcoming blogpost …

A conference in Norway, on – what else? – sound art, is the first big, public event of the new, the second, two year round of RESONANCE activities. Organized by Lydgalleriet in Bergen (one of RESONANCE’s current co-organizers), the event goes by the name of Ephemeral Sustainability. As the buzz words that make up its title indicate, the Bergen conference invites and intends to thoroughly reflect on the presentation and documentation, the collecting and archiving of the fast growing corpus of sound based contemporary art.

“Is it only through documentation and human witness reports that this sound based, and hence fundamentally ephemeral, form of contemporary art can be appreciated in hindsight, or are there other strategies to strengthen its bonds to the past?,” the organizers ask. “Is this field of art in its nature and ideology impossible to transport, collect and re-act, or does it have a potential in more traditional art collections and museums? Do we need a new practice and new venues to collect and present it, or can this be done within the frames of already existing structures and organisations?”

On the first three days of November, a large group of ‘conveyers, artists, curators and thinkers within the field’ will gather in Bergen to look at these questions from many different angles. Together the contributors make for an impressive list indeed, too long to be clearly readable on the image above, which is a reduced version of the announcement of the Ephemeral Sustainability event in the current issue of The Wire.

In the Berlin version of her work, Maia Urstad continues her gathering of sonic details about time and place from local radio stations around the world, which are woven together in a subtle polyphony of voices, tones and white noise, transmitted via local FM-frequencies by a spiraling, labyrinthine collection of some 40 portable radio’s…

“Meanwhile, in Shanghai … (berlin)” opened on Wednesday April 25th in Kunsthaus MEINBLAU, Pfefferberg, Haus 5, Christinenstraße 18/19, Berlin. It can be experienced there each week from Wednesday till Sunday between 14h and 18h, until May 27th.

The final presentation of the first two year-phase of Resonance, before continuing for (at least) another two years with a new series of commissioned works of sound art by European artists, will be part of this year’s Sounding City, the sound-art-music program of the yearly Festival van Vlaanderen (Festival of Flanders) in Kortijk, Belgium.

This year’s edition of the Festival of Flanders’ Sounding City focuses on the relationship between sound and the public space. It opens on Saturday April 28th, with a guided tour, starting at 16h from the Budascoop, Kapucijnenstraat 10.

The Sounding City sound art works can be experienced in Kortrijk on Saturdays and Sundays, until Sunday May 13th. For details, see the Sounding City web pages.